Post Messenger Recorder -

By Kim Tschudy

"Sacrifices. They married in record numbers and gave birth to another distinctive generation, the Baby Boomers. They stayed true to their values of personal responsibility, duty, honor and faith." Tom Brokow

Dear Jane, Julie and John,

The passing of your father, Butch, this past Tuesday has changed your life in a way in which we will never fully understand. Yet, it is inevitable. We all face this same change once in our lives. Despite knowing this change will occur, it comes, sometimes unexpectedly, sometimes slowly, and always painful. There are no instructions for this change. It was on this day that the three of you became the oldest generation of your family.

When this life change occurs, we stumble around trying to figure out what is next, asking ourselves are we prepared for this? We aren't, no matter how much we steel ourselves for when it happens. There simply is no way to anticipate how we will react.

Time does heal much of this, the profound loss is the load we carry on our shoulders until our children become the oldest generation. This is a time of great introspection, self-examination, silently asking ourselves are we up to this new challenge. We aren't. It's that simple.

But from this experience comes a new way of looking at our parents, and the lives they lived. Your memories of them will flash back when you least expect it. The first few times this happens, it comes as a big shock. We try in vain to figure out in our minds and ask ourselves, what brought on this memory?

Be prepared, because it will continue to happen in those unguarded moments. Those flashback memories carry no warning bells, no advance thunder claps. Enjoy them for exactly what they are. It is those times that you gain an appreciation of your parents in a way you never could when they were physically in your day.

Jane and Julie, it's easier to write about what you will experience. For those of us who carry the moniker of the first of the baby-boomers, those children of women and men who, often shortly after high school or part way through college, our parents had their lives interrupted by WWII. Their world was put on temporary pause for five long years, until the armies of Germany and Japan were beaten into a pulp, and the world our parents grew up in was once again at peace.

Jane and Julie, you come out of this much easier than does your brother, John. The two of you, along with your mother, Ruth, were the wind beneath Butch's wings. Your situation was not a happenstance occurrence. In you, our WWII Veteran dads saw their daughters and wife as the gentleness you provided them from the hells of the wars they had endured. You provided that safe harbor in the storm, a sanctuary from the memories of the horrible death and destruction they encountered in the Pacific and Europe. A man-made hell they often could not and would not talk about.

Our mothers could talk about their war experiences. They went off to become WACs, WAVES, WASPs, went to work in the many factories around the country that had converted to making the equipment needed to keep their men hopefully alive.

They went to work in the hospitals, operated those train station refreshment and sandwich canteens across the country for the troop trains pulling in for a quick stop on the way to the east and west coasts, ran the local Red Cross blood drives and bandage rolling sessions in masonic halls, church basements, town meeting rooms and school houses.

Our mothers, wives, girlfriends, sisters and cousins provided the warming touch of a hug, a big bright-eyed smile for the guys on their way to an unknown destiny. A destiny that so often ended in death or debilitating lifelong injuries.

John, you being a first son, were, in all probability, like many first sons of these men who went off to war, never sure of your relationship with your dad. Most of us first sons faced the same thing. It often manifested itself in a decidedly cool relationship with those first sons.

Again, if you were like most of us, you wondered what you had done wrong, or should have done to win the approval of our fathers. These men we saw and lived with each day, were, to us, an enigma we never understood.

For us, those sons, we wanted to hear our dad's war stories. We made play guns to play army or war as our way of trying to win our dad's hearts. It was a failure on our part. Looking at Butch's Army service record, Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge, tells all that need be said of the hell of war. These men had a front row seat to hell on earth.

Their official service record seldom tells us what we really wanted to know. There was, as we now know, a reason for these good men and their reticence at talking about the "Dad what did you do in the war" questions we asked.

There is no way these men could ever explain or answer their young and inquisitive son's questions. How does one ever explain what these men saw that early June 6, 1944, morning when they hit the beaches of Normandy? How can they ever explain the horrors of the liberation of Dachau, Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz POW camps at the end of the war?

General Eisenhower had it right in his June 6, 1944, Order of the Day, speech: "Soldiers, Sailors of the Allied Expeditionary Forces:

"You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over oppressed peoples of Europe, and the security for ourselves in a free world."

Knowing what these men and women did during WWII makes you think their duty to country ended the day their military service concluded. In reality, it was only a warm up for what was to come in their lives. At the time these men went into service, the population of New Glarus was 1,068. Of those 1,068 people, well over 200 men and women served in the active military.

When they returned home, they picked up their lives where they left off. Soon, many were involved in their parents businesses. In those years after returning home, their true legacy was built. There was hardly a business in New Glarus that didn't have at least one WWII Veteran working for them.

These men and women of WWII were the true community builders. They saw us through some bad economic times, they were the people who ran the civic groups, the people who literally built post-war New Glarus. This is but a small list of those main street veterans who built New Glarus as we know it today. Beginning at the north end of town, Pet Milk employed many of these men and women. Fred Lienhardt - theater, Duane Babler - tavern, Jerry Disch, George Hartman and numerous others at Disch Hardware, Ken Hoesly, Ernie Hofer - Ford garage, Gene Stuessy, numerous employees, New Glarus Hardware, Ed and Lenny Bigler - Bigler's Tavern, Millard Tschudy - Tschudy's Store, Art Zweifel - Zweifel Motors, Abner Anderson - blacksmith shop, Butch and Bob Strickler - Strickler's Market, a third brother, Gilbert, stayed in the Army and retired as a colonel, Ron Tschudy - post office, Myron Bartle - tavern, Dean Gmur, Ralph Bethke - shoe shop, Harry Wyman - tavern, Roy Ziltner - grocery, Jake Schmoker, Don Flannery - tavern, Ed Willi - law office, Jim Roberts - drug store, Ingwell Brothers - restaurant, Walt Wenger, Les Stauske, Emil Ziltner - tavern, Gerry Dorst - chiropractor, Eldon Brauer - gas station, Louie Ubert - gas station, Roger Klassy - mill, Delmar Kubly, Ed Richert - Chevy garage. This is but a small list. Today, most of these community builders have passed on.

Jane, Julie and John, we, the children of the Greatest Generation, are by no stroke of the imagination the luckiest generation. We live in the big shadow they left for us. The shoes we inherited from these wonderful people will always be two sizes too large for us.

Go in peace.